About Those Punis

Remember the punis that I bought from Gourmet Stash at Maryland Sheep and Wool? They generated a lot of curiosity among my knitting and spinning friends, so I decided to start spinning some up to show them how it's done, and I thought I'd share that here as well. I started with this batch (a merino/yak/silk blend):

A puni is a woolen preparation, sort of a mini rolag. Fibers are blended on a hand card or blending board and then rolled off using a dowel. The result is a little bundle of fiber arranged in a cylinder, almost, and to spin it, the fiber is pulled off the end. This gives you a woolen yarn, because the fibers are arranged in a circular formation (as opposed to a worsted prep, in which all the fibers are straight and aligned).

I'm using somewhat of a worsted draw to draft out the fibers because the punis are fairly tight, making more of a woolen draw very difficult. The resulting yarn isn't as smooth and even as one spun from combed top would be, but then again that's the point.

This will be a fun (and likely blinding) yarn when it's done! Each puni is only taking me maybe 10 minutes to spin up, so I can probably do one or two a day and have the whole ounce spun up in a couple of weeks!